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Poster:	ice9freak	Date:	August 27, 2010 07:20:25am
Forum:	GratefulDead	Subject:	Re: Phish doing the Dead..uh oh.

Althea, I definitely recommend Rift as a good studio album to start with. It's a little darker and less silly (although not entirely unsilly!) than other studio efforts. I'll even hazard a guess that the title track might be the mystery song that caught your ear.

I got deeply into Phish around '97. I gave the wound of Jerry's passing a year to heal (I was pretty young at the time, had only seen 3 GD shows) and then made Phish "my band." I saw about a dozen shows in two years and was just mad for it. I traded tons of tapes, made tons of friends, and had a hell of a time. Then the scene went south: hard, dangerous drugs became increasingly present in the lot, people started getting naked and running across the stage mid-song, folks took to throwing glowsticks at Trey's face and hands while in mid-solo. Around that time I got deeply into jazz and started collecting records.

I love both bands dearly, and while I agree that on the whole Phish's lyrics tend to get sillier than the Dead's, they do have some meaningful tunes. A quick list: Dirt, Fast Enough for You, The Horse, Walls of the Cave, Roggae... I could go on. I don't feel this way personally, but I could easily see someone finding the lyrics to Dark Star or China Cat silly at first listen. Just sayin'. Phish, while not for everyone, is a truly incredible quartet of musicians who pull rabbits out of hats left and right during their live shows.

For anybody here who hasn't heard it, I recommend tracking down Phish's 8/9/98 show in Virginia Beach for the encore alone. Make sure you find an AUD version, too. Goosebumps, guaranteed.